Two Nights in a Crater [pp. 308-316]

Two Nights in a Crater.
A VINTAGE SONG.
COME drink with me, for the wine is white;
The wine is sparkling and white.
One quaff is enough to quell your pain;
One quaff, but you'll never feel rest again
Till the glass to its dregs you drain.
So drink with me, for the wine is light
Tis the idle dream of a passing night,'T is Fame.
Come drink with me, for the wine is red;
The wine is ruddy and red.
What care you now for the hearts that burst,
That the press crushed hard in its hold accurst,
So it quench you your parching thirst?
Then drink with me, for the wine is red;
'Tis the blood of the hearts that broke and bled,'T is Life.
Come drink with me, for old wine is best;
Old wine is ever the best.
And this has lain in the vaults of time
Since the world first carried its curse of crime
Since it woke from a sleep sublime.
So drink with me, for old wine is best;
'Tis but one deep draught and then- peace and rest,'T is Death.
Julie H. L~ippmann.
TWO NIGHTS IN A CRATER.
THERE is one point on the horizon, as
seen from the city of Mexico, which has for
travelers a strange fascination. It is the
awful cone of Popocatepetl, springing fromn
the southern wall of the valley.
Since men were born, and the love of
adventure has found lodgment in their hearts,
mountain peaks have ever tempted to do
and to dare. The calm defiance, the cloudlike beauty of a soaring mountain top, —
the mystery, the danger, the difficulty of the
ascent, - all provoke the warrior instinct
and lure men on to conquest and possession.
Besides all this there was about the peak
of Popocatepetl a legendary and historic
interest. Gods had made it their dwelling
place. The memory of Huitzilopochtle and
Quatzalcoatl, and Tezcat!lipoca, and numerous other deities with pleasant names still
lingered about it. Devils at one time dwelt
within its mnolten bowels, and the spirits of
bad Aztecs worked out their periods of probation in the profundities of its crater.
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